When not working on my own art I spend a great deal of time out and about looking at other work.

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

A Fashion Treasure from the 1920’s

It’s time for another treasure that I have brought to the
West Coast.This is the type of
thing my father paid a dollar or two for around 1970.I remember it hanging on the wall back in our Victorian in
Buffalo.It moved with us to the
house on Cape Cod.There the
elements were tough on it.Even
indoors, when you have an old house between a salt marsh and the beach,
everything is damp.Unfortunately
this piece has some serious foxing issues.

It’s pencil and gouache on paper.I suspect it may have been cut from a sketchbook.The size is 7” wide x 14” high. Signed
in pencil on the front.There are
framing instructions on the back in pencil in the artist’s hand.Who was Violet Gene Schwender who
signed this rather lovely fashion rendering from the 1920’s?

Sometimes a bit of internet searching makes one feel merely
frustrated and teased.I want to
see more of her images like this one. I did learn that Violet Schwender was the
artist’s maiden name.Violet Gordon
lived a long life, passing away in 2005 at the age of 1998.To think, if I had looked into this a
bit sooner, I could have asked the artist herself.

I learned she was well known in Buffalo as a local artist,
but Violet Schwender Gordon was also a teacher of Fashion and Design in the New
York State University system.She
even wrote the book (which I can find no record of online) that was used as the
basis of the university system’s curriculum.Somewhere, I hope there is an archive that has a treasure
trove of more of her fashion renderings.Maybe one day I’ll get o see it, and in the meantime I need to look into
restoring this one.

On another note, a little bit more about the framing -

When I pulled apart the original frame I found that the only backing that was used was some cardboard from a
product called Chase’s Domino Mints
that promised:

Chase’s Domino Mints are
Strictly Quality mints, and are in a class all by themselves—Not an ounce of
glucose, starch or other adulterants used, thus leaving no unpleasant
“after-taste.” A few Chase’s Mints
every day chases all indigestion away.

90 years ago it was candy that claimed to be medicinal.Nowadays we have other medicinal sweets
here in California.It seems Chase’s
is still business, but there is no mention of the mints on their website.

About Me

I am an artist living in San Francisco. I work primarily in mixed media, collage and landscape painting. My work has included maps, postcard-themed art and mail art projects. In 2013 I began a series called Collagescapes where I start painting paper with areas of color representing the palette of a specific place. Next I cut the paper into hundreds of small pieces, randomize the pieces and then reassemble them in various geometric patterns. Collagescapes are both landscape paintings and collages. They appear abstract but retain the color palette of the places they represent.
My new series is Time Travel Photos — handmade photo collages showing places in San Francisco where I have cut and sliced present-day photographs and interwoven photos of nature representing how the City looked before Europeans arrived. Each is an image of an urban space with the natural past emerging through. For example, creeks once again run through the Mission and dunes reappear in Golden Gate Park and tidal flats fill the Embarcadero.
My work has shown in over 40 venues, primarily in California but also in other locations in the United States and abroad. My artwork can be viewed at tofuart.com